The Silver Mage

by Katharine Kerr

  “I thought of telling you,” Arzosah said, “but I was afraid to. My experience of you two-legged groundlings had not been pleasant, you know. Medea was old enough to defend herself, but Mezza was only some twenty years old, practically an infant. Men with spears and the like could have slain her.”

  “I can understand your being cautious. I gather Medea could feed them both?”

  “She could and did.” Arzosah’s voice rang with real pride. “She’s a splendid little darling, truly. My two gems were hiding in that cave where Rhodry found me, you see, and they saw and heard what happened with that loathsome dweomer ring. The poor wee mites!”

  “That really is very sad. I don’t suppose it would have occurred to Rhodry to ask if you had young ones.”

  “He was a male with mannish blood. Of course he didn’t. But they knew I’d come back to them as soon as I could, and Rhodry was decent enough to release me at the end of the summer.” Arzosah paused, turning her head to watch Rori and Neb walking slowly together toward open ground. “I worried about them, of course, the entire time we were apart. The next summer I made provision for them before I returned to Cengarn.”

  “Provision?”

  “None of your affair.” She hissed softly. “We dragons have our secrets, and please, don’t use my name to force me to say more.”

  “Very well, I won’t. You’re right. It’s none of my affair.”

  A huge drum began beating—the sound of Rori flapping his wings to allow Neb to inspect the strength of the golden wires. Since neither Dallandra nor Arzosah could have heard the other, they fell silent. Dallandra had a moment’s stab of guilt. She’d not thought of Loddlaen once after she’d returned to Evandar’s country, while the dragon, a female of coldhearted wyrmkind, had fretted about leaving her young.

  Rori stopped drumming and folded his wings back. Neb turned and called out, “He’s doing well! The wound’s holding nicely.”

  “Good,” Arzosah said. “Almost healed at last!”

  While he’d been healing, Rori had apparently been laying plans. When Dallandra had a moment alone with him, he brought up the matter of Kov.

  “After I get Berwynna to safety, I’ll go back for Kov. I promise you that.”

  “My thanks, but what do you mean, get Wynni to safety?”

  “I don’t want her in Cerr Cawnen. I have a bad feeling about all of this, Dalla. I’m going to take my daughter to the Red Wolf dun and ask Tieryn Cadryc to take her under his protection.”

  “No doubt he will, and truly, I think you’re wise. But you can’t just leave her there by herself.”

  “What? She’ll hardly be alone in that dun.”

  “But she doesn’t know anyone there, doesn’t know if she can trust them or if she’ll like them or what. Your poor child’s in mourning for her man, Rori. She’s been dragged away from her home and everything she’s ever known, and—”

  “Stop! Yes, of course.” The dragon interrupted her with a toss of his head. “You’re right, truly. My apologies, Dalla, and my thanks as well.” He fell silent, and when he spoke again, it was in Deverrian. “That’s somewhat else I’ve forgotten, how a woman can feel weak and timid if she’s surrounded by friends she doesn’t know are friends.”

  “Only women feel that way?”

  His laughter rumbled briefly. “You’ve caught me there,” he said. “Men, too, at times.”

  “So I thought.”

  “But well and good, then. I’ll take Mic with her, if he’ll go, and I think he will. We don’t want him sneaking off to try to rescue his cousin on his own, anyway.”

  “Very true, especially since Kov isn’t where Mic left him. Every time I scry for him, I see him still in some sort of tunnel with all those other people.”

  “Then he’s safe for the nonce. Good. I’ve not got the time to rescue him right now.”

  Traveling underground with a pack of Dwrgwn was coming close to driving Kov insane. He was accustomed to the tightly organized and rapid marches of Mountain Folk, who could cheerfully cover thirty miles a day, even when burdened with children and household goods. Under the same conditions the Dwrgwn dawdled, dragged, whined, complained, and at moments, outright stopped to sit down and announce that they simply couldn’t move one more step. At the most, Kov figured, they were making twelve miles daily, and that on a good day.

  The tunnels meandered, changed direction and levels, and branched off in a welter of ways. Kov could keep track of where they’d been, but since he had no idea of where they were going, he could only listen with the others while Lady and Leejak argued furiously about the route. Eventually one or the other would win, and the ragged procession would set off again, trending generally north.

  Now and then they reached an air vent where a ladder leaned against a nearby wall, the sign of an observation hole. One of the Dwrgi men would climb up, stick his head out for a look around, then climb down again to tell Leejak what he’d seen—usually mere landscape. Finally, however, after a long blur of days in the tunnels, the scout hurried down and began chattering in sheer excitement.

  “He did see huts,” Leejak told Kov. “We be here, and they be not burnt.”

  Most of the Dwrgwn stayed in the tunnel to watch over their goods while Kov, Leejak, Lady, and a guard of five men climbed up and out. Waiting for them was a delegation from the new village, a half circle of Dwrgi spearmen guarding a woman dressed in shimmering gold. When Lady hurried forward to greet her, Kov guessed that she held the same position of lady in her tribe. The two women walked a few steps away from the crowd and began to talk in low voices.

  Both sets of men crossed their arms over their chests and stared at each other in cold silence. One of the men from the new village wore clothing made of leather, Kov noticed. Around his neck, a bronze knife with a long blade dangled from a chain.

  When Kov looked around, he realized from the position of the sun that he faced east. Straight ahead, in a bend of a river, stood a circle of meager-looking huts some hundred yards away. In among them, he saw two of the narrow wooden booths indicating entrances to the underground domain of this new group. He turned back to the west and saw straggly fields of grain stretching out to a stand of trees. I could be anywhere in the Northlands, he thought. Even if he managed to escape his captors, getting home to Lin Serr was going to be an adventure at best but more likely an ordeal. At worst—what if he never found it?

  The two women had finished their conversation. Lady rejoined her troop of refugees, spoke briefly to Leejak, then addressed them, speaking so fast that Kov could pick out only a few words here and there. From the way that everyone smiled and nodded, he could assume that they were being welcomed. Or at least, most of the refugees were welcome—he himself seemed to be an exception, judging from the villagers’ cold stares and the fingers jabbed in his direction. The fellow in the leather clothes unhooked his knife from the chain and gave Kov an unpleasantly meaningful look.

  “They no trust you,” Leejak told him. “I go talk sense to their head woman.”

  He stalked off to join the woman dressed in gold scales. Lady came over to Kov and patted him on the arm.

  “Fear not,” she said. “We won’t let them sacrifice you.”

  “Sacrifice?” Kov could hear an unmanly squeal in his voice and coughed to clear it.

  “They want to sacrifice you to the water. You’re a stranger, and not one of us, and so they’re frightened, is all. With Horsekin on the move, everyone’s at the edge of panic.”

  “That man with the knife. I take it he’s the priest?”

  “Not in the sense that the Deverry people speak of priests. I think you could call him a spirit walker or somewhat like that. He knows some dweomer.” She sighed and paused to watch Leejak, who was waving his arms as he spoke. “They do agree that we have to make some sort of strike at the Horsekin. They have good spearmen here, she told me, and now we’ve brought more.”

  “Do they know about that fortress?”

  “They do, and t
hat’s what will save you. I told them that as a man of Earth and the mountains, you understand stone and how to destroy such things.”

  Kov’s stomach clenched. He wished he’d paid more attention during those long meetings with the sappers and miners of Lin Serr.

  “The rest of us will stay here,” Lady continued. “Some of the men will stay to guard us; not, I suppose, that they’ll be able to do much against raiders like the ones who burnt our village. We’d all best keep underground as much as possible.”

  “That seems wise to me, certainly.”

  Finally, the woman in gold flung her hands in the air, said something abrupt, and turned back to her village. Smiling, Leejak strode over.

  “She tell me no sacrifice,” he said.

  “Thank all the gods for that.” Kov let out his breath in a sharp sigh of relief. His aching stomach began to ease.

  “I tell them you know tunnels and such. You bring down fortress for us.”

  “Ye gods, I hope I can do it now!”

  “You best had. Spirit man, Gebval his name, he come with us. If you no kill the fortress, they sacrifice you and me with you.” Leejak tossed back his head and laughed. “So dig good, Mountain Man!”

  Kov’s stomach clenched again, so tightly that he feared he was going to vomit. He managed to suppress the urge, then pushed out a smile that, or so he hoped, brimmed with confidence.

  Kov and Leejak spent the rest of that day gathering supplies and volunteers for their long hike west to the Horsekin fortress. Although the Dwrgi men would bring their spears, their real weapons would be shovels and baskets to move the earth under the fortress. Fighting above ground would get them killed, Kov figured, and little more. Still, when he surveyed his ragged pack of Dwrgwn, he found himself wishing for a nice large contingent of Westfolk archers and Deverry swordsmen, someone to guard them while they dug, under Prince Voran, say, or Lord Gerran of the Gold Falcon.

  Impossible, of course. The old Mountain proverb came to him, “Do what you can with what you have, and if you can’t do anything else, then dig your way out of danger.” It was, he reflected, the best advice he was going to get, and the only.

  Lord Gerran happened to be out in the ward, talking with his foster brother, Lord Mirryn, when he heard the drumming of dragon wings, heading for the Red Wolf dun.

  “Messages from Prince Dar, maybe,” Gerran said.

  “A good guess.” Mirryn shaded his eyes with his hand and looked off to the west. “I think it’s Rori. It’s a silver one, anyway. Here! He’s carrying riders.”

  Yelling for pages to follow them, they hurried out of the main gates and jogged down the hill to the meadow where the dragons usually landed on their infrequent visits. The silver wyrm circled the meadow, dropping lower each time, then ungracefully flopped into the tall grass. His two riders wasted no time in sliding down from his massive back, a man of the Mountain Folk and a pretty young woman with dark hair and cornflower blue eyes.

  “Allow me to present my daughter,” Rori said in his deep growl of a voice. “Berwynna of Haen Marn, and her maternal uncle, Mic son of Miccala, both of Lin Serr.”

  Gerran and Mirryn bowed to the visitors. Berwynna, who was wearing baggy old brigga and a man’s shirt, managed to drop a decent curtsy.

  “I can’t tell you how glad I am to be on the ground,” was Mic’s only response.

  Rori laughed in his deep rumble.

  “Oh, come now, Uncle Mic,” Berwynna said. “It were glorious, being up so high and seeing everything all laid out below.”

  Mic rolled his eyes and moaned under his breath.

  “Be that as it may,” Rori said, “I’ve come to beg the tieryn to take my daughter and her escort under his protection. Mirryn, do you think—”

  “Of course!” Mirryn broke in. “I shall be honored to escort such a lovely lady back to my father’s dun.”

  Mirryn led the pair away. Gerran untied the various sacks of supplies and bedrolls from the dragon’s broad back. He handed them over to the pages to carry and sent them back to the dun while he lingered to have a few words with the dragon.

  “I’ve got messages from the prince,” Rori said. “They’re in the pouch around my neck. If you’ll just untie that and take it up?”

  “Gladly,” Gerran said. “Is our prince well?”

  “He is, for now, but truly, Gerro, I don’t like what I see up in the Northlands. The Horsekin are moving south. War might not come this year, but sooner or later, it will. We’ve got to get more men into the Melyn River Valley.”

  “So we do, but I don’t know where we’ll find them.”

  Gerran carried the messages back up to find the great hall full. The warband, the servants, and the noble-born alike all crowded in to see the lass who was a dragon’s daughter. Gerran found his greatly-pregnant wife, the only person in the dun who could read, and handed her the pouch of letters.

  “Is she truly Rori’s kin?” Solla asked.

  “So he said, and I’ll not be arguing with him.” Gerran paused to sniff the vinegar-scented air. “She smells like one of the great wyrms, truly, but that may be from riding on her da’s back.”

  Lady Galla had noticed the scent as well, apparently, because she called for servants to heat bathwater and swept Berwynna off to the women’s hall. Mic had to make do with the stream out in the meadow. The next time that Gerran saw Berwynna, he and Solla were sitting together at the table of honor. When Galla and the lass came downstairs, Gerran noticed that she was wearing a proper dress, a pale gray color trimmed with bits of blue Bardek silk.

  “That’s Galla’s very best dress.” Solla sounded on the edge of laughter. “No doubt she wants little Berwynna to make a good impression.”

  “Why?” Gerran said.

  Solla rolled her eyes. “Because of Mirryn, of course.”

  “Ah, I understand now. Our lady’s spotted marriage prey.”

  Solla giggled, then arranged a neutral smile for Galla and Berwynna when they joined her at table. Mirryn sat next to Berwynna, begged her to share his trencher at dinner, and put on what courtly manners he had, pouring her a goblet of Bardek wine and asking her various small questions while Galla beamed at them both. Berwynna, however polite, seemed mostly weary.

  Late that night, after Solla had spent the evening in the women’s hall, Gerran learned the cause of Berwynna’s exhausted air.

  “The poor child!” Solla told him. “Her betrothed was slain in battle not a month past.”

  “I’ll have a word with Mirro, then,” Gerran said. “He needs to pull back his forces and plan for a long siege.”

  “Will it trouble his heart that she’s been betrothed?”

  “I doubt it. An alliance with a powerful dragon, and through him to our overlord? It’s worth laying aside a few scruples.” He paused to grin at her. “Assuming Mirro has any.”

  Solla abruptly winced and laid both hands on her swollen stomach. “The baby kicked me again, and twice,” she announced. “Gerro, I’m as sure as ever I can be that this is a lad. No lass would be so mean to her poor mother.”

  “I’d tell him to stop, but I doubt me if he’ll listen.”

  “Oh, no doubt he wouldn’t. He’s your child, after all.”

  They shared a laugh and a kiss.

  In the morning, once Solla had written out the tieryn’s answers to the prince’s messages, Gerran took the pouch back down to the meadow, where the dragon lay lounging in the sun.

  “Good,” Rori said. “I need to get myself back to the prince’s camp.”

  “No doubt he’s safer with you there.” A wink of gold on the dragon’s side caught Gerran’s attention. “Here, that wound’s finally healing!”

  “So it is, and I thank every god for it, too. Neb’s the one who cured it.”

  “He’s a marvel with his herbs, truly. I can parry with a shield as well as I ever could, thanks to him.”

  “Good. I’d wondered about that wound. You know, there’s a real wisdom to be found in wounds.”<
br />
  “Indeed?”

  “You sound unconvinced.” The dragon rumbled with laughter. “I’ve learned that, these past years. Look at me. Do you think there’s a creature alive that could kill me?”

  “I don’t. Maybe a squad of enemies, but then, you could just fly away from them.”

  “True spoken. But you know, being invulnerable’s robbed me of the joy of living. When I was a human man and a warrior, every moment of peace I had glowed and warmed me like mead, because I knew that in the end, my Lady Death would take them all away from me. Now I face year upon year of tedium.”

  That sounds splendid to me, Gerran thought, but aloud he said, “Well, your daughter told my lady that the elven mages were trying to turn you back into a man.”

  “If I let them.” The dragon let out a long vinegar-scented sigh. “Ah well, Gerro, farewell! Let’s hope we meet again, but who knows where my wyrd will take me?”

  “No man nor dragon either knows that. I’ll hope for the best for you.”

  The dragon waddled away into the clear space of the meadow. He bunched his muscles, spread his wings, and leaped into the air. Gerran watched him soar, as tiny as a white bird against the bright sky, until he disappeared.

  As soon as she’d seen Lady Solla’s maid, Penna, Berwynna had realized that her people belonged to the strange village folk up in the Northlands. She waited until she had a chance to be alone with Uncle Mic before she asked him if he’d seen it, too.

  “Most assuredly,” he said. “Did you notice the one-armed gatekeeper? I think his name is Taurro. He’s one of them, too.”

  “Twice a mystery, then! I’ll see what I may learn about them.”

  Fortunately, Solla and Galla both knew the tale. They told Berwynna as they sat sewing in the women’s hall.